


debris

by firefall



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: And It Works Out Anyway, Canon Compliant, College, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I.E.D., M/M, Male Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Pack Dynamics, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Sometimes You Need An Alpha But You Get A Stiles Instead, What I Give Him: Struggles, What Liam Wants: Snuggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 05:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15812046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefall/pseuds/firefall
Summary: Liam’s stomach hurts as he looks around the room, his sins laid bare and ugly.  He knows he has to clean up, has to hide the monstrous parts of himself, but the destruction is vast and overwhelming and Liam scrubs angrily at his wet eyes when he feels himself tearing up again.  He can’t do it.  He just can’t.Liam has his first IED episode in years and needs help picking up the pieces.





	debris

**Author's Note:**

> When will I write happy!Liam?? Probably never! *throws confetti*
> 
> Warnings for: some swearing, a mention of off-screen animal death, references to poor parenting, and Liam being quite unkind to himself re: his mental illness.
> 
> I don't own Teen Wolf and am not profiting off this work. All characters and storylines belong to Jeff Davis and MTV which is p unfortch.

It’s probably strange that becoming a werewolf – even in the most unorthodox of ways – helped calm Liam’s anger like nothing else ever could.  Sure, it was hard at first to balance the IED with sheer, raw physical power but once he started seeing his anger as a tool, as something that made him stronger and more focused, it was surprisingly easy to channel it into fighting alongside his friends and protecting the weak and the innocent. 

It took becoming a monster for Liam to realize that he wasn’t one.

“What three things cannot long be hidden?” Scott would ask him…or maybe it was Stiles.  Or Mason or Derek or Malia or Kira or Lydia.  Sometimes even Mr. Argent.

“The sun, the moon, and the truth,” he’d tell them and the rage would melt away quickly like it never did with the anti-psychotics or expensive therapy or his mom screaming at him in tears while his dad tried to comfort her.  Liam’s gotten much better at not screaming back.

Pre-wolf, Liam had completely written off the idea of college.  Being fourteen years old and coming out of a blinding fury to find that he’d destroyed his coach’s fancy car was as terrifying as it was disheartening.  It’d proved right all the hushed whispers in the hallways and the increasingly impatient letters from his teachers and principals – he’d never be able to be normal.  He was destined for a life of mediocrity and desperately trying not to commit homicide.

But then there was Scott and there was the roof of the hospital and there was friends and understanding and three things that can’t long be hidden, so Liam goes to college.  He goes and he succeeds and he makes new friends and has weekly FaceTime dates with his old ones and it’s good.  _Great_ , even.

So of course he fucks it up.

He’s lucky his roommate’s gone for the weekend because when his vision clears and the molten blood cools in his veins and his body stops shaking from unrepressed rage, the dorm room is completely destroyed.  The carpet is strewn with ripped clothes and the desk chairs are in splinters and the mattresses are torn open, slashed by angry claws.  There’s a giant hole in the wall and Liam winces as he watches his bloody knuckles knit themselves back together.  He feels like he’s fourteen again.

So, feeling small and scared and so, so alone, Liam sits down in the middle of his mess, pulls his knees up to his chin, and cries as quietly as he can.

It takes ages to calm down, a shaky hand clamped over his mouth to muffle the sound of his tears.  The last thing he needs is someone coming in to check on him – he’d be expelled in less than a minute.  It’d be Devenford all over again.

Liam’s stomach hurts as he looks around the room, his sins laid bare and ugly.  He knows he has to clean up, has to hide the monstrous parts of himself, but the destruction is vast and overwhelming and Liam scrubs angrily at his wet eyes when he feels himself tearing up again.  He can’t do it.  He just can’t.

Hopelessness is too familiar an emotion for Liam.  He hates it.

But no matter how young Liam feels, he’s not actually fourteen anymore.  And, even more importantly, he’s not alone.  So he swipes the sleeve of his hoodie across his runny nose, gets gingerly to his feet so he can lock the bedroom door, and pulls his phone from his pocket.  Luckily it’s still intact.

His entire being is crying out for pack, for _alpha_ , but Liam’s finger hovers over Scott’s name without ever pressing it.  There’s no question that Scott would drop everything and drive hundreds of miles if Liam asked, which is why he’s not going to do it.  Liam knows Scott’s neck-deep in his graduate program and barely staying afloat – he doesn’t need a distraction, especially a beta-shaped one.

Liam presses the name beneath Scott’s instead.

 _can u come help me? i need u_ , is all Liam says.  Stiles responds almost immediately.

_R u dying? like, presently? as we speak?_

It tugs a grin across Liam’s lips and it’s a bone-deep relief.  Stiles isn’t the alpha, but there’s a pull in Liam’s chest as he reads the messages anyway.  A pull that feels like family, like an anchor.  It settles him.

_not currently_

_good i can’t do any more death today. my partner hit a fox this morning and i just kept thinking about kira?? is that weird? like i know she’s not actually a fox but that little dude is like her brother or something and we just left it on the side of the fucking road_

It takes a bit, but Stiles finally promises to come by.  His FBI field office is only about an hour from Liam’s school.  Just knowing he’s on his way gives Liam the courage to face his demons and start sifting through the angry debris.  By the time he hears a knock at the door, Liam’s managed to sort through some of the shredded clothes.  His roommate’s going to kill him.

Liam doesn’t need to look through the peephole to know that it’s Stiles.  He can smell him even through the door – sweat and gunpowder and a low-grade anxiety the poor guy can never quite shake.  Liam hesitantly opens the door, stepping back to let him inside and hanging his head in shame.  His shoe is untied.

Stiles whistles.  “Damn, dude.”

“I know.”  Liam wrings his hands.  “I kind of…exploded.”

“I gathered that, yeah,” Stiles says but when he steps toward Liam, it’s just to give his shoulder an affectionate squeeze.  “You okay, bud?”

At the gentle inquiry, Liam looks up at him in surprise.  It’s not the reprimand he was expecting at all.  “Yeah, I—I think so.”

“Good,” Stiles says decisively and then he’s picking up the broken pieces of one of the desk chairs and dropping them into an extra pillowcase he finds on the floor.  Once that one’s done, he moves onto the next.

Liam watches him out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the disappointment to creep into Stiles’ face and the scolding to start, but it never does.  Stiles just keeps cleaning, humming absently to himself.

It’s weird.

When Stiles wads up a pair of Liam’s boxers – now with a gigantic hole in the ass – and shoves them into the garbage can, Liam just can’t stand it any longer.  “Aren’t you going to ask what happened?” he says, voice pitched embarrassingly high even to his own ears.  He knows he sounds like a little kid, but he can’t help it.  He fucked up.  _Bad_.  And there are always consequences for fucking up, whether it be expulsion or monetary compensation or mothers that scream even when their sons cry and plead and beg for forgiveness.

But Stiles just shrugs, holding a Batman t-shirt up to the light to check for holes.  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.  I hate when people ask about my panic attacks.  It’s embarrassing.”

Liam ponders that for a moment, chewing on his lip.  Then he says quietly, “I failed my midterm.”  He gets down on his knees to carefully gather the loose screws from the desk chairs before any unsuspecting Stileses can step on them.  “I studied so fucking hard but I still bombed it and now I’m gonna have to re-take the class.”

“Shit, man, that _sucks_ ,” Stiles says sympathetically.  He’s trying to make heads or tails of the torn mattress.  There’s stuffing sticking out everywhere.  It makes Liam feel sick.  “That’d make anyone flip out.”

“Yeah, but I thought I’d be okay,” Liam says quietly, throat getting tight and voice going rough.  Dammit, he’s probably going to cry again.  “It’s been _years_ since I had an attack and I was stupid enough to think I was better or something.”  He laughs bitterly, eyes going hot.  “Once a monster, always a monster, I guess.”  

The room suddenly reeks of a mixture of empathy and sadness.  It makes the tears spill over, hot on Liam’s cheeks.  Stiles drops the corner of the mattress to stand before him and put a hand on each of Liam’s shoulders.  His eyebrows are pulled together in concern.

“Listen, I’m not—I’m not Scott, okay?” Stiles says, quiet and nervous but full of care.  Liam can smell it.  “I can’t _be_ Scott – trust me, I’ve tried.  I’m not good at this kinda shit like he is, but—I want you to know that it’s not your fault.  It’s _not_.  No matter what anyone’s fucking told you.”  His grip on Liam’s shoulders gets tighter.  “You’re a _werewolf_ , Liam!  A werewolf who takes care of people instead of hurting them, all while fighting against the crap that lives in your brain.  Do you get that?  That—that’s _incredible_ , man!”

Liam shivers, hugging himself around his middle like he can will himself not to break.  His nose is running.

“You’re _good_ , just like the rest of us.  Just like Scott,” Stiles tells him, brown eyes wide and honest.  “And I’d literally fucking deck everyone that made you feel like you’re not.”

Liam does break then, falling forward to bury his face in Stiles’ shoulder.  Stiles catches him easily, running comforting hands over Liam’s back like he can soothe the self-loathing right out of him.  It sort of works – when Liam manages to pull himself together, he feels lighter, like heavy chains have been unclasped from around his ankles.  He smiles awkwardly up at Stiles as he pulls away, sheepish.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, cheeks pink.  “It’s just been a really rough day.”

“You’re okay,” Stiles promises.  Then he grabs for the mattress again.  “Let’s flip these over, yeah?  With the sheet on, you won’t even be able to tell it’s ripped.”

They work steadily for the next hour, flipping mattresses and taking pillowcases of trash to the dumpsters and moving Liam’s dresser in front of the hole in the wall.  Stiles even takes Liam to Walmart so they can replace some of his roommate’s shirts that got ruined.  It’s great to be in the jeep again and Liam can’t help but close his eyes and breathe it in.

“Okay, dog boy,” Stiles says but it’s good-natured.  He’s only teasing.  He slaps Liam on the knee with a grin.

By the time they’ve scattered the new shirts artfully around the floor – Liam’s roommate is kind of a slob, god bless him – the dorm room looks almost as good as new.  He’ll probably have to pay for the damaged drywall once summer comes and they move out, but he’ll worry about that later.  Right now it’s October and Stiles has an arm slung around Liam’s shoulders and his chest is warm with _pack pack pack_ and it’s hard to care about anything else.

“Too bad you’re a fucking child or I’d take you out for a drink,” Stiles says as Liam walks him back to his car.

Liam rolls his eyes.  “You were literally _at_ my twenty-first birthday, Stiles.  Not that you’d remember because you got so drunk you threw up in Malia’s lap.”

Stiles laughs, clapping a hand over his mouth to stifle it.  “Now _that_ I remember!” he says, nose wrinkled.  “I had to plead ‘anchor’ just to keep her from murdering me.”

“Next time,” Liam says, opening up the jeep’s door so Stiles can climb inside.  “For the drink, I mean.  Even if it won’t do anything.”  Then he bites his lip, voice going quiet.  “And thanks for everything.  I was really scared and I just needed—”  He trails off.

“Pack,” Stiles says simply, like he understands.  Liam thinks he probably does.  “Some stuff’s too big for one person.”

It makes Liam smile.  “Now _that_ sounds like Scott,” he says and Stiles throws him a wink before he drives away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
